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English Literature B

Periods of English Literature:

Ø  The Middle Ages Ø  The Sixteenth Century Ø  The Seventeenth Century Ø  The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century Ø  The Romantic Period Ø  The Victorian Age Ø  The Twentieth Century



Ø  The Middle Ages Ø  The Sixteenth Century Ø  The Seventeenth Century Ø  The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century Ø  The Romantic Period Ø  The Victorian Age Ø  The Twentieth Century



Ø The Romantic Period (1785 – 1830)

Ø The Victorian Age (1830 – 1901)

Ø The Twentieth Century (1901- Present)

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The Romantic Period

(1785 – 1830)

The Romantic Period

Historical Changes in Britain: Country was changing from an agricultural society (landholding aristocracy) to a modern industrial nation (large-scale employers and restive working class).

The Romantic Period

Historical Changes in Britain: Country enclosed open fields and communally worked farms into privately owned agricultural holdings. This transition created a “landless class’ who either migrated to the industrial towns or remained as farm labor, existing on starvation wages.

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The Romantic Period

Historical Changes in Britain: Ø  Industrialists and merchants prospered and

the government took a social philosophy of laissez-faire which allowed people to pursue their private interests.

Ø  For the majority of the laboring class, this policy resulted in inadequate wages, long hours of work under harsh discipline in sordid conditions, and the large scale employment of women and children.

The Romantic Period

Historical Changes in Britain: Ø  The French Revolution during this period

was very influential to England. Ø  The French were rebelling against the

monarchy (feudal system). Ø  The conditions prevailing in England at that

time made her particularly receptive to the new ideas generated by the Revolution.

The Romantic Period

Literary Changes in Britain: Ø  This revolution affected not only politics but

literature as well. Ø  The age expressed its impatience of set

formulas and traditions and the tyranny of rules and the bondage of conventions.

Ø  Romanticism is concerned more with the individual than society.

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The Romantic Period

Literary Changes in Britain: Ø  The literature deemphasized the

importance and power of reason as a reaction against the Enlightenment mode of thinking.

Ø  Writers became more interested in social causes as the period moved forward.

The Romantic Period

On the formal level, Romanticism loosened the rules of previous artistic expressions of writing: Ø  Strict expectations regarding the structure

and content of poetry turned to experimental styles and subjects.

Ø  The high-flown language of previous generations turned to natural cadences and verbiage.

Ø  Rhymed stanzas turned into blank verse.

The Romantic Period

Common Values of Romantic Writers: Ø  Art, as the product of individual creation, is

highly prized. Ø  Nature, rural life, and pastoral imagery make

common subjects for poetry. Ø  Individual achievements are highly prized. Ø  All people, regardless of wealth or social

class, should be able to appreciate art and literature and artists should strive to create art and literature accessible to everyone.

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The Romantic Period

Singled out as the six main poets of the Romantic period: Ø  William Wordsworth Ø  Samuel Taylor Coleridge Ø  Lord Byron Ø  Percy Shelly Ø  John Keats Ø  William Blake

The Romantic Period

William Blake (1757 – 1827)

The Romantic Period

William Blake (1757 – 1827) William Blake’s unconventional works were at odds with the prevailing tastes of the day that his contemporaries did not appreciate the magnitude of his works.

Only after World War I was Blake widely recognized as a passionately dedicated and original artist.

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The Romantic Period

William Blake (1757 – 1827) William Blake’s unconventional works were at odds with the prevailing tastes of the day that his contemporaries did not appreciate the magnitude of his works.

Only after World War I was Blake widely recognized as a passionately dedicated and original artist.

The Romantic Period


William Blake drew a distinction between his “spiritual life” and his “corporeal life,” considering the former of paramount importance.

The Romantic Period


William Blake attended drawing school in his youth and frequented numerous art galleries. At fourteen, he began a seven year apprenticeship with engraver James Basire, and then studied briefly at the royal Academy of Arts.

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The Romantic Period

William Blake

Due to Blake’s background, he published his poems through a painstaking process which required developing text and artistic designs on an engraving plate and painting the illustrations with water colors after the printing the page.

The Romantic Period

Songs of Experience and Innocence

In Songs of Innocence, Blake writes “happy songs/Every child may joy to hear.” Although many of the poems “incorporate injustice evil and suffering, these aspects of the fallen world are represented as they appear to a state of the human soul that Blake calls innocent.”

The Romantic Period


In Songs of Experience, Blake shows the contrary state of the human soul. This “experience” is an “ugly, terrifying one of poverty, disease, prostitution, war, and social, institutional, and sexual repression.

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The Romantic Period


“Though each stands as an independent poem, a number of the songs of innocence have a matched counterpart or ‘contrary’ in the songs of experience.”

The Romantic Period


The Romantic Period

William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)

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The Romantic Period


Considered the greatest of the English Romantic poets, Wordsworth described reality in language so lovely that his poems seem to confer a deeply spiritual beauty on their subjects.

The Romantic Period


The sheer beauty of his lines stood in sharp contrast to the stilted diction of much of the current eighteenth century poetry. He defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” that “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

The Romantic Period


Wordsworth believed that upon being born, humans move from a perfect idealized realm into the imperfect, un-ideal world. As children, some memory of the former purity and glory in which they lived remains in their joyous relationship with nature. As children grow older, the memory fades and the magic of nature dies.

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The Romantic Period


From Lyrical Ballads

Simon Lee (page 245)

We Are Seven (page 248)

The Romantic Period

Sonnet A lyric poem of fourteen lines, commonly written in iambic pentameter. The two standard sonnet types in English poetry are the Italian sonnet and the English sonnet.

The Romantic Period

Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet A lyric poem divided into two parts. The first stanza is an octave (abbaabba) and the second is a sestet (cdecde or cdccdc).

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The Romantic Period

Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet The first octave generally presents a problem, states a proposition, or raises a question. The sestet presents a resolution, either solving the problem or commenting on the subject.

The Romantic Period

English (Shakespearian) Sonnet A lyric poem structured into four sections: three quatrains and a final couplet. The typical rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg.

The Romantic Period

English (Shakespearian) Sonnet Like the Italian sonnet, the first two quatrains generally presents a problem, states a proposition, or raises a question. The next quatrain resolves the problem with the final couplet used as a commentary.

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The Romantic Period


Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

(page 317)

The Romantic Period


Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abby

(page 258)

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